ETHAN PITZMAN
Special to The Leader
Photo by BECCA TORNCELLO | Sports Photographer
Peter Buerfent sat anxiously in the locker room before his college hockey debut.
With his headphones on, he kept his head down and stayed focused.
He didn’t say a word.
English was his second language, and he felt like the new guy on the team.
It took him 10 games to make the lineup.
Just a freshman, expectations were low for him that night.
He had other plans.
He didn’t come overseas to be a healthy scratch all year. He wanted a spot in the lineup, and he would make the most of his opportunity.
Buerfent was born and raised in Cologne, Germany. Like many of his friends, he played soccer growing up.
At eight years old, his father introduced him to hockey.
“My dad was a hockey player, so I was always close to the sport,” Buerfent recalled.
Once he switched to hockey, he never looked back.
Even with the late start — most of the other kids started skating at 4 years old — Buerfent was eager to compete.
By the age of 10, he caught up to his peers in skill.
A few years later, he was one of the best players on the team.
Fast-forward to his U17 year, and Buerfent was playing for the Cologne Sharks.
He was the leader of the team and one of its leading scorers, with 22 points in 30 games, according to Elite Prospects.
At the end of that season, in the semi-final game of their final tournament, Buerfent scored the overtime game-winner.
“Everyone jumped on the ice,” he remembers from that day. “It was one of the best hockey memories I’ve had.”
After moving up to play U20, he continued to excel.
It was around this time that Buerfent started to realize where hockey could take him.
There were only a few good programs in Germany where players could develop, and he was on one of the better teams.
It was time to take the next step.
“I got to the point where juniors stopped,” Buerfent said. “I had to either try to play pro hockey, go to school or work.”
He realized that staying in Germany limited him to these three options.
In the U.S., however, he was offered an opportunity to play hockey for a school while getting his education. “It made the choice easy,” he said.
He joined the Fredonia Blue Devils for the fall semester of 2023.
One reason he joined is because of the level of competition within the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC), which he described as being “fierce” within Division III.
Teammate Antoine St. Onge was one of the first people to greet Buerfent when he arrived at Fredonia. They met as complete strangers, but it wouldn’t take long for them to become best friends.
They were not only teammates but also roommates in the dorms.
St. Onge is from Montreal, Quebec, so they bonded over being the new guys living in the U.S. for the first time.
St. Onge remembered one of the first meals they shared in the dining hall. “It felt like we were already good friends even though we had just met,” he recalled.
Meeting great friends helped Buerfent feel at home, even after coming all the way from Germany.
There was a transition period to college life, as expected.
He had never lived away from home for a long period of time before coming to Fredonia, but he got more comfortable as the year went on.
Hockey was also different. “Back home, the game was more skilled, and here, it is more physical,” he said. He had to adjust to the faster pace and stronger opponents.
In North America, there is less of an emphasis on making skillful plays than there is overseas. Here, it is more about playing simple and playing hard.
“From a hockey perspective, I could definitely tell he was a Euro,” teammate Dillon Schmidt said. “He came in as more of a finesse player.”
As his freshman season got started, he was still making the adjustment to the play style.
He was not dressed for the first month of the season. He worked hard in practice and watched the games impatiently.
He knew he just needed one chance.
Fredonia was already starting to feel like home, but he felt like he was underperforming on the ice.
Even before he made the lineup, he knew coming to the U.S. to play hockey was a good choice.
“Back home, no one cared about hockey,” he said. “It feels like everyone on campus is dedicated to the sports here.”
Coming to this realization made him even more excited to hit the ice for his first game.
On Dec. 2, 2023, he finally got his chance.
He walked into the pregame meeting and saw his name on the lineup sheet.
It was time to lock in.
He took a cold shower and ate some pasta to keep his pre-game ritual going from back in Germany.
Once he got to the rink, he threw on his old Apple headphones and kept to himself. He wasn’t super close with the guys yet, but he still knew they had his back.
That night, he took the ice in a conference matchup against Brockport.
It didn’t take long for him to make an impact.
He scored a goal and added two assists, helping Fredonia secure a 4-3 victory.
“It was the best game I’ve had since I’ve been here,” he said.
There was intense competition in practice every week to determine who plays on the weekends, and a performance like that helped earn him a spot.
Buerfent continued to play well the remainder of his freshman season. He was a consistent player in the lineup almost every night.
Sophomore year, he took on a more social role in the locker room.
He was no longer that quiet kid waiting for his chance.
“I got to play more and more this year,” he said. He also said that he feels closer to the guys and it’s a better, “connected” team.
The Blue Devils have not had a winning season since his arrival, but Buerfent has continued to develop as a skillful forward.
With two years under his belt, he said he is ready to take on a bigger role next season, both on and off the ice.
He said that next fall, he plans to return to the ice more determined than ever.